


Frozen Fingertips

by RetroactiveCon



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Cold, Domestic Fluff, Knitting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “What do you know about Raynaud’s?”“Ray who?” Mick’s brow wrinkles in confusion. It sounds familiar, but his damn brain is just coming up with static.“Not who, what,” Len corrects, though not with any particular irritation. “Raynaud’s. It’s a disorder that causes loss of circulation to the extremities. Most distinctive sign is discoloration of the fingertips.”“And you have this…whatever.”“Yes.”
Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	Frozen Fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to TheRedHarlequin and blueelvewithwings for indulging my desire to plot ways to inflict my cold-loving irritation with Raynaud's on an equally cold-loving Len, and in particular blueelvewithwings for the lovely image of Len completely swaddled in things Mick has knit him.

Mick is watching the game when Len emerges from the shower, staring at his hand in bewilderment. “Hey Mick?” he asks, his voice deceptively mild. Mick knows that tone. It means something’s up, but his little punk partner won’t admit it. 

“Yeah?” He pretends he doesn’t sit up just a little bit, ready to lunge forward if Len passes out. The game’s going damn well, but Len is always going to be more important.

“What do you know about Raynaud’s?”

“Ray who?” Mick’s brow wrinkles in confusion. It sounds familiar, but his damn brain is just coming up with static. 

“Not who, what,” Len corrects, though not with any particular irritation. He sounds half-fascinated by whatever his hand is doing, though it looks like a perfectly normal hand to Mick. “Raynaud’s. It’s a disorder that causes loss of circulation to the extremities. Most distinctive sign is discoloration of the fingertips.”

“And you have this…whatever.” Mick has learned when not to try, and this is one of those cases. The only difference he can see is that Len’s fingertips look a little bit pink, but he wouldn’t call that ‘discoloration.’ 

“Yes.” Len holds out his hands and frowns. “I think I’ve had precursor symptoms for longer than I thought. I just brushed it off.” Mick must look more puzzled than usual, because Len explains, “My hands have always changed color in the cold, just not…until today…the distinctive loss of color in the fingers. Here, I’ll show you.”

With that, despite telling Mick that being in the cold cuts off bloodflow to his fingers, Len strides over to the freezer, grabs out an ice pack, and holds it between his hands. Mick leaps out of his seat with an incoherent yell. Sometimes, like with a cat, a loud yell is enough to startle Len out of doing something. Other times, like now, it isn’t. Len holds up his fingers and asks proudly, “See?”

Mick sees. The tips of Len’s fingers have shaded to blue, and an area below that has gone pale. The color difference is faint but distinct. 

“Ouch,” Len says, sounding more surprised than pained. “Good to know. Cold didn’t used to hurt like this.”

“Gimme that.” Mick snatches away the ice pack and puts it back in the freezer. “If it hurts, don’t keep holding it. For the brains of this team, you don’t think much about your own safety.”

“Of course I do.” Len is staring at his now color-changed hands. Mick snatches them up and clamps them fiercely between his own hands, determined to warm his stubborn little partner up. “I just know which risks are acceptable and which aren’t.”

Mick doubts that, given the frozen fingers currently clasped in his. “Yeah, right. You’re gonna buy thicker winter clothes, right?”

Len scoffs. “I’m fine. I’m not going to stop enjoying the cold just because my fingers get a little blue.”

“That’s exactly what you’re gonna do,” Mick growls. Of course his ridiculous punk of a partner won’t take care of his own fingers. They’re _attached_ to him and he doesn’t even care. “Your love of cold ain’t worth you losing your fingers.”

“You don’t need to worry so much.” Len’s fingers start to wriggle in his grasp. Reluctantly, Mick lets him go. “I have your irrepressible love of warmth to balance me out.”

In that moment, Mick decides to take that as a challenge.

***

It takes a week and some books borrowed from the local library (Mick’s not fool enough to steal _books_ —knowledge is there to be shared and appreciated), but Mick teaches himself some rudimentary knitting. It’s not much and it’s not great, but it’s enough to buy some needles in a couple of different gauges, some yarn in a couple of different weights, and start to knit some mittens.

He goes to great pains to make sure Len never catches him in the act. Len will make him burn the mittens if he finds out about them (as if Mick would, when this is good wool), so they have to stay a secret until they’re done.

They end up becoming fingerless mitts out of Mick’s frustration at the decreases. He suspects Len will like this better anyway. When he finally binds off, he’s left with two lumpy fingerless mitts splotched with an odd blue pattern because of the multicolored yarn. He stares in dismay at a too-large spot of navy blue on the back of the right mitt.

“Great. I have ‘em. What do I do with ‘em now?”

Following the instructions in the book, he washes and blocks them. Looking at them in their sopping, drying glory, he regrets not knitting a few practice swatches before diving wholeheartedly into mitts.

“What are those?”

For as much as Len has a tendency to waste words on the job, he doesn’t bother when it’s just the two of them. Mick appreciates that. 

“They’re for you,” he mumbles. “To keep your frozen hands warm.”

Len holds them up, heedless of the fact that they’re still soaking wet. “They appear to be lacking a critical part if they're to achieve that goal,” he notes, waving his fingers over the part where the ends of the mitts should be. 

“Figured you’d want your fingers free.” It’s easier than explaining how many times he had to rip out the decreases. “Plus, they’ll keep your wrists warm, which is where bloodflow happens and all that crap.”

Len tilts them this way and that with a look that Mick’s learned means he’s having emotions and he doesn’t like it. “They’re hideous,” he says finally, “but they’ll have to do.”

From Len, that’s a resounding ‘thank you.’ Mick will take it.

After that, Mick catches his little punk partner actually wearing the mitts. He thought that would be a separate (and probably longer) battle, but apparently Len is being sensible for once. He knows better than to confront him about it, but a couple of times, out of nowhere, Len snaps, “You’d make me wear them if I wasn’t already.”

Seeing Len wear the mitts makes Mick determined to knit some better ones, so he throws himself into his newfound hobby with single-minded devotion. It’s almost as soothing as watching flames once he gets the hang of it. He can knit and watch the game, or knit and watch a leaping fire, or just knit. It’s all good.

The next pair of mittens, he finishes the decreases. They turn out a little too pointy and weird, but Len proclaims them ‘kinda cute’ and wears them around. Mick tries not to feel a weirdly possessive thrill every time he catches Len wearing them, like he’s done something good for his little punk partner and that makes Len’s warmth his.

After that, he knits a sweater. It’s less lumpy than the mitts, mostly, but because he’s nowhere near brave enough to try cabling, it comes out a little plain. Len insists he has ten just like it. (Mick isn’t sure he owns ten of anything.) Somehow, even with his protests, Len seems to wear that sweater an awful lot.

Then Mick discovers the wide world of hat patterns. He knits a plain beanie, an incredibly lopsided cabled monstrosity (Len’s words), and, to spite him for his complaints about the cabled monstrosity, a black beanie, identical to the first in every regard except for a pair of cat ears. He carefully shapes them with a little curve of their own so they stand up like real cat ears. 

“I’ll kill you in your sleep,” Len says when he sees the ears. Mick assumes he’s joking.

By the time winter arrives, Len has a vast and progressively less lumpy array of mittens, fingerless mitts, pullover sweaters, cardigans, hats, woolen socks, and even a large thick-stitched blanket to keep him warm. This turns out to be a blessing when, on New Year’s Day no less, their heater goes out. 

Mick wakes in darkness, feeling somehow both freezing cold and smothered. Without even opening his eyes, he realizes why he’s smothered: a shivering Len is clinging to him. He absolutely does not squeeze him closer as he rumbles, in his best attempt at sarcasm, “‘Sure, Mick, I love the cold.’”

Len’s teeth are clenched too tightly for his “Shut up” to have the desired effect. 

“Guess we gotta call the repair people,” Mick sighs. It means their safehouse is no longer safe and they’ll have to go, but Mick doesn’t trust himself to repair a heater without trying to make it light itself on fire. “But it’s New Year’s, they may not be here ‘til tomorrow or later.”

“Well,” Len says between chattering teeth, “don’t burn the furniture. That’ll be hard to explain when someone gets here.”

“Gotta start a fire of some kind, though,” Mick insists, shifting more of the blanket over onto Len. “Your whole hands will turn blue if I don’t.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Even as he speaks, Len shoves his hands under Mick’s body in search of warmth. Mick huffs and pushes himself up.

“You got stuff for this,” he says. 

Moments later, with the bare minimum of prodding, Len has been bundled in wool: a navy cardigan over the beloved plain black sweater, the cat-eared hat, the too-pointy mittens, and thick woolen socks. Only his sweatpants haven't been knit for him, and those are covered with the thick flame-colored blanket Mick is proud of. Seeing him completely covered in his hand-knit gifts makes Mick just about glow with pride.

“You’ve knit me enough crap that you could bundle up like this too,” Len points out from where he’s huddled on the bed. 

Mick, who’s been on hold with the repair people for five minutes, looks over from his phone call to pronounce, “You know I carry my heat with me.” When a voice on the other end of the line makes a startled remark (of course _this_ is when they pick up), he exclaims, “No, that’s not a reason not to get someone out here quick!”

Somehow, miraculously, a couple of guys show up to fix the heater about an hour later. Mick goes out to deal with them with the strict instructions that Len absolutely not move from the bed. The repairmen give him odd looks throughout, but he assumes that this is out of pity for being the loser whose heater went out on a holiday and not for the fact that he’s changed into one of the sweaters he knit for Len. 

“They were staring at you.”

The repairmen have only just left when Len speaks. Mick turns around to find him standing in the bedroom door, his usual languid pose made more amusing by the blanket draped over his shoulders. 

“Well yeah,” Mick says with a shrug. “I’m the sorry asshole whose heat went out on New Year’s. And I’m keeping warm in this.” He gestures down at the lumpy navy sweater. The size difference between him and Len is on full display; the sweater is warm enough, but it’s tight as hell.

“Yeah,” Len agrees, “I think that’s part of the problem.”

Before Mick can ask him to clarify, Len wanders over and envelops him in blanket. 

“Are you still cold?” Mick asks dubiously. The other possible reason—that Len just wants to cuddle—is too weird to consider. They don’t cuddle.

After a beat, Len admits, “Yes.”

“Thought so.” Mick drags him to the sofa, pushes him down, and huddles under the blanket with him. While they wait for the heater to catch up with the freezing house, there’s no shame in sharing body heat. “Good for you I carry my heat with me.”

Len mumbles something uncomplimentary. In moments, he’s back asleep.


End file.
